Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  I didn’t really think about what I’d said to her until I’d already left out the kitchen door, letting the screen door bang shut behind me. I didn’t have long to marvel at my own stupidity in potentially alienating someone we might need, and who had recently been one of the most powerful individuals in the human world.

  After the day I’d had, I kind of marveled that I’d made it through that meeting at all, much less managed to stay more or less on task.

  Even so, for those seconds, anxiety gnawed at my chest.

  I probably could have handled that better.

  “Sister!”

  The male voice snapped me out of my reverie.

  I turned my head, sighing internally when I saw the cluster of seers waiting for me. They all looked paler than usual. I could already tell from the charged and disjointed aleimic strands still flickering around the group that they’d been talking about what happened earlier that day.

  Dalejem wasn’t with them, though.

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know where he was.

  “Sister,” Talei said, her voice soft.

  I looked at her, startled more from the open concern I could hear in her voice. Then, realizing what it probably stemmed from, I felt my jaw harden.

  My skin flushed hot before she even continued speaking.

  “Jem told us what happened,” she said carefully, confirming my suspicions and making me stiffen more. “Esteemed Sister… we should get you to our medical technicians, as soon as possible. We should also contact sister Yumi, if you––”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m fine. Thank you, sister. But no. Not right now.”

  “Allie––” Chandre cut in, her voice noticeably harder.

  But I couldn’t deal with her right then. I really couldn’t.

  I looked away from their concerned stares, flattening my voice.

  “Suit up,” I said to Mara and Kat, knowing they wouldn’t give a shit about me, at least.

  I switched to Prexci, partly in case Brooks came out of the house, but also because I knew formal Prexci carried the tonal qualities I needed to get them to drop what happened in that cave and get their heads back in the fucking game.

  Also, Neela’s English sucked.

  I returned my gaze to Talei and Chandre only after Mara nodded.

  “You, too,” I said, my voice only a touch less hard.

  My eyes shifted to Jorag and Neela last.

  “I want you two to be ready, as well… in case Brooks takes me up on the offer of bringing a larger team with her back inside. I gave her the basic op plan. Don’t hesitate to push her if she tries to tip anyone off about who you are. In fact, monitor all of her transmissions from now on. At least until we have Novak.” Pausing, I looked around at all of them. “Anyone heard from Declan? Surli? They’re still in there, right?”

  Talei nodded, once.

  “Yes. Dec called. He found Novak’s sleeping quarters, as well as what appeared to be some kind of private work station only she has access to.”

  I exhaled. “Good. Tell him to wait on approach until he has back up. Preferably me. I don’t want him going after her alone… I don’t give a fuck how old she looks. Balidor agrees with me on this. She’s fucking dangerous. She might even be an actual Dreng spirit in a material body, like Menlim. I want zero fucking casualties on this.”

  I glanced at Kat, frowning when I caught her staring at me, looking over my body and hair like she’d never seen me before.

  “…There’s a good chance Menlim is going to bring the house down on us the second we go live,” I added, ignoring whatever the hell was going on there. “He might even bomb the complex outright. So we need to do this fast. No mistakes. I want Brooks safe, but Novak is the priority. She needs to go. I want that to happen in under twenty-four hours. I strongly suspect our window will close after that.”

  Some of the worried, depressed chaos I’d felt in their lights started to clear at my words.

  That time, I saw no rebellion in those eyes. They all nodded, murmuring as one.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” I muttered to myself.

  I needed this dealt with. I hadn’t been lying to Brooks about that.

  Novak had to go. After what happened that morning, she wasn’t the burning, number one priority in my mind anymore, but she was still pretty damned high on the list.

  As I thought it, the tape rewound in my head before I could stop it.

  Iron fingers holding me against the wall by the throat. Me choking, legs kicking out as I fought to work the telekinesis, thinking this was it… I was going to die. I’d already punched the monster, trying to get him off Feigran.

  Dragon picked me up like I weighed no more than a doll. I don’t know how long I hung there, slowly blacking out.

  My mind had ripped open at some point––my light.

  I remembered screaming Revik’s name. Lily’s.

  Dragon had already thrown Dalejem aside, taking the gun out of his hands with the telekinesis. He caught that same rifle, one-handed, only to let it drop to the floor, turning those glowing green eyes on me.

  But I couldn’t think about this now.

  I couldn’t go there, no more than I could let Talei or Chan go there.

  There’d be time enough for that later.

  There was always time to break down later.

  Rubbing the skin around the burnt part of my leg through the charred pants, I fought to clear my head, to think through the intensity of the different shocks to my system, with little or no breathing room from one to the next.

  I had to think about what to do now––not just for me, but for the sake of the rest of our team.

  I had to think about how to tell Balidor what had happened, and the fact that I’d lost Feigran for what felt like the millionth time. I had to think about how I would even go about tracking Dragon without getting a hell of a lot of people killed.

  I knew we had to track him though––somehow.

  The thought caught in my chest, clenching something there so tightly I could scarcely breathe. I fought it, trying to force it back even as pain leaked over my light––separation pain, but more than that. That day’s events fought to overwhelm me briefly, even as I did my best to force it out, to not think about it yet.

  I couldn’t think about this now. I fucking couldn’t.

  I couldn’t fall apart now.

  I managed to force it back simply because that was nothing more nor less than the complete truth. Even so, something in that rush of pain and fear opened my light. It opened it more than I had in days––certainly more than I had since I’d landed back in America.

  It could have been a coincidence. It could have been.

  Either way, I could feel him.

  Suddenly I could feel Revik.

  At first his presence alone cut my breath. It blanked my vision, stuttered my mind, hurting my very skin. I hadn’t felt him at all that day, not in any of that nightmare with Dragon, but now, outside of an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, I felt him.

  I felt him all around me, and then…

  Then I felt more than just his presence.

  He wasn’t alone.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Pain hit me. It didn’t just hit me––it nearly knocked me out.

  I let out a low cry, part of it disbelief.

  Gods, he wasn’t… he couldn’t be… not already.

  I panicked, fighting to get it out of my light.

  When he didn’t withdraw, when he only coiled into me more insistently, I shoved at it, at him, fighting him, hitting out at his light, doing anything I could to get him away from me. I panicked just from the barest taste of it, slamming out harder before I would have to feel it for real.

  It took what felt like an endless stretch of time.

  It took too long, longer than I could stand, but eventually I got the last taste of his presence away from me.

  That hurt too. Him being gone almost hurt more.
/>   Almost.

  I found myself coming back into my body like water dripping through a dense cloth, and then I was fighting to rebuild my shield. Only then did the mission reassert itself, enough to make me wonder how much of me he’d felt on the other end.

  Did he know where I was? Had I just lied to Brooks?

  Had he felt anything of what happened that day? Had he seen me with Dragon?

  I couldn’t think about that right then, either.

  As for the rest…

  Pain fought its way back into my chest, so intensely I couldn’t think through it at first. I struggled with it, fought to rebuild my shield around it when I found myself choking back what might have been a sob, or maybe something a lot more animal.

  I tried to be rational. I tried to hold onto that military thing, the part of me that could stand to think about any of this.

  I knew this was coming. I fucking knew it. He’d warned me they’d probably throw women at him from day one, if only to see how he’d react.

  I knew. I’d been waiting for this.

  But not now. Not today. I couldn’t deal with this today.

  I didn’t realize how much I’d lost track of everything around me, or how tightly I’d shielded, until I felt a hand rubbing the small of my back in slow, strong circles.

  I had no idea how long he’d been doing that, either.

  I blinked, fighting to focus my eyes. Once I had, I found myself bent over by the SUV, no memory of walking there.

  Dalejem stood next to me, silent.

  I didn’t look up, but I knew his light by now. After today, I’d always know it.

  I wondered if he’d been trying to talk to me, but I shoved that out of my mind. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  “Are you okay?” he said, soft.

  Realizing tears ran down my face, tears I could only hope had been obscured by my hair hanging down, I wiped my cheeks without raising my head.

  “I’m fine,” I said, clearing my throat. “Has she left the house yet? Brooks?”

  “They’re long gone, Esteemed Bridge.” His voice remained low, stripped of emotion but softly reassuring. “She took Chandre, Mara, Talei and that Kat seer with her.”

  I nodded, still bent over, fighting to control my breath and light.

  He didn’t move away, or take his hand off my back.

  I barely noticed. My mind still reeled around the flicker I’d felt of Revik, strongly enough that it must have blacked me out entirely. I must have been offline for at least a few minutes if Brooks and the rest of them had gone.

  I’d felt something in those few seconds of contact.

  Meaning, something other than the one thing––which felt a hell of a lot like my husband getting a blow job from someone who wasn’t me.

  I fought again to control my light as the thought reverberated. I fought to focus on the detail that actually mattered––the one that had some bearing on what I was trying to do.

  Once I had, I realized I’d already known.

  Feigran had imparted that piece of information, too. It might have been his final gift before Dragon took him.

  Revik was going to China.

  30

  FALL OF AN EMPIRE

  REVIK STARED OUT a dirty car window streaked with rain.

  His jaw ached from clenching it.

  He fought to shut out the pain that still coiled around his light. Guilt lived there, a denser pain that had little to do with separation and more to do with what he’d let happen in the back rows of that plane on the way here.

  They’d left Lhasa that morning, flying to Beijing.

  He’d spent weeks in Lhasa, picking the last of his team and doing his best to get them all more or less on the same page in terms of the operational hierarchy. He’d also made at least a superficial effort to learn the basics of their individual skill sets and personalities, as well as some of the more intimate ties between the various players.

  Over five weeks had gone by since he left Bangkok.

  Over a month. A fucking month.

  He’d felt Allie in part of that––strongly enough that he knew she must have felt him, too. He couldn’t block it out. He’d tried, but he couldn’t.

  He’d be more careful next time.

  He knew he might be kidding himself, though.

  He’d tried to be strategic about it. He put them off for weeks––longer than he probably should have, given what he’d told Menlim about him and Allie releasing one another from vows. When his repeated refusals of sex in Lhasa didn’t stop them from asking questions, pushing him about Allie, about his separation pain, about his unwillingness to engage with them in more intense bonding, he realized he couldn’t continue to put them off forever.

  He figured if he let it happen more or less where the rest of them could feel it, they might be more willing to leave him alone.

  He knew why they were hounding him.

  It wasn’t because they wanted him––much less that they wanted his light. Most of them still hated him for deserting. Most of them still saw him as a traitor.

  This wasn’t about a single one of them actually wanting to fuck him.

  This was about Allie. It was about hurting his wife.

  They hated her. Some, like Ute, hated her to the point of unreason.

  Revik felt that hatred seethe off their light, pretty much whenever her name came up. He heard their voices fill with contempt whenever she got a mention on the feeds. He’d overheard detailed rape threats, descriptions of what they’d do to her if they ever got a hold of her in person. He’d had to fight to keep his mind closed and his body still when they threw those threats in his direction, or even when he just walked into a room at the wrong time, which happened more often than the other.

  They blamed her… for a lot, it seemed.

  So yes, Revik knew what the constant offers of sex were really about.

  Trying to fuck him was just another way of throwing a dart at his wife’s back.

  Hell, they were probably under orders.

  Whatever the truth of that last part, letting that infiltrator blow him where the others could feel it hadn’t worked, in terms of getting the rest of them to back off.

  It hadn’t even worked temporarily. He’d been propositioned twice more before he even got off the damned plane.

  Shoving that off his light with an effort, he tried not to think about the fact that he’d felt her while it was happening. He knew that was probably his fault, whatever he’d tried to do at the time. He’d always had terrible control when it came to keeping his light away from his wife’s while he was fucking.

  He’d been dragging her into his sex life for longer than he cared to admit. He’d done it as far back as Russia––before he’d even met her as an adult outside of the Barrier.

  He couldn’t think about this now.

  He couldn’t fucking think about this now.

  Shoving the guilt and separation pain further out of his light, he focused on the mud-streaked view through the tinted windows.

  They’d been met at the airport by an entire military convoy.

  He should have expected that, given whose name he traveled under again, but the sheer sophistication of the resources blew his mind. He knew it was meant to. It was likely meant to intimidate him, to make him feel the weight of his wife’s comparatively scant resources.

  He felt Menlim dancing around their uneasy truce like a lion circling its prey, waiting for it to be separated enough from its herd to take it down.

  So far, “Shadow” had honored that agreement––on the surface at least.

  He’d kept Revik out of the main construct.

  He’d allowed his light to retain a fair amount of autonomous space, instead feeding him information via individual seers, uplinks, data terminals and virtual landscapes.

  Those means of imparting information lay in direct contrast to the elaborate Barrier spaces he knew his subordinates accessed for more in-depth information, but since he w
as cut out of a fair bit of that for security reasons anyway, he didn’t much care.

  After a number of meetings with Menlim’s current circle of military leaders, they’d determined to give him China.

  They wanted him to breach the Forbidden City.

  Menlim acted as if he’d bestowed some great favor in giving him this job, but truthfully, the thought of what lay ahead made Revik feel faintly sick.

  Granted, he had no lingering love for the seers of the Lao Hu.

  He had no love for their leader, Voi Pai, in particular, and not only because she’d betrayed him and Allie time and again, breaking truces and kidnapping their friends on more than one occasion. She’d made his wife into a whore.

  Worse, she’d given Allie to Ditrini, who was obviously insane, even to those who obeyed his orders.

  Revik’s anger on that point wasn’t limited to Voi Pai, either.

  The rest of them let it happen.

  Even with who she was, they’d let Ditrini do that to her.

  Worse, many of them had taken advantage of her powerless state at the time.

  Revik had seen bits of that as well, in his hallucinogenic tour of her time there. He wished he hadn’t. Moreover, he knew that whole series of events hurt Allie more than she pretended.

  Some of those people she’d considered friends. Some pretended sympathy to her predicament prior to their joining in on the abuse.

  Hell, Revik probably had Terian of all people to thank for keeping her alive in Beijing.

  Allie told him that “Ulai,” the seer whose body Terian inhabited––unbeknownst to her at the time, of course––had been the one to finally convince Voi Pai to intervene with Ditrini.

  By then, the psychopath had already beaten her nearly to death. He’d tattooed her with his mark, raped her repeatedly, goaded others to rape her. He’d made her into a slave in all but name. A real one, from what Revik had seen via his wife’s light––and he’d seen a fuck of a lot more about that than he ever wanted.

  More than he’d ever be able to forget, most likely.

  It occurred to him he still owed Balidor a drink for taking that fucker Ditrini out.

  His personal issues with the Lao Hu leadership notwithstanding, this job still didn’t sit well with him. The thought of desecrating the holy City bothered him more than he wanted to think about, regardless of what he thought of the current administration.